Mosaic on the DNC convention- an Arab view

via truthdig.

Marta and the Iowa State Fair Corndog Queen

Brian Conley leaves China

photo of Brian Conley(on the right) and Jeff Jarvis, c. 2006, courtesy somethingtobedesired.com

from a sequence of emails from Eowyn Rieke, Brian Conley's wife:

1.Brian Conley, founder of Alive in Baghdad was arrested Tuesday, August 19th while in Beijing. Press inquiries may be directed to press@aliveinbaghdad.org



2. According to the US Embassy (last update received 11:30 pm US EDT Saturday, August 23) there has been no big change. They still anticipate that the 8 US detainees will be deported on August 30. They are advocating for earlier release, but have not received a response from the Chinese authorities.

We can increase the likelihod of early release by continuing to apply political pressure. If you are close friends or family of any of the detainees, or have good contacts in the offices of US Representatives, US Senators or the State Department please contact them and ask them to press the issue with the State Department and the US Embassy in Beijing.

We can also continue the pressure via media coverage. The Washington Post published an excellent editorial on Friday, August 22 and an article on Saturday, August 23. That should help elevate the issue of Tibetan repression and Chinese intolerance of free speech. But more is better! Please, keep talking to any press contacts you have, especially those in major media outlets.

We're in a dangerous time in the press cycle -- the Democratic National Convention is about to start and the Olympics are about to end. As a result the Beijing detentions and issues of human rights in China may just get lost or ignored.

If you want to get really mad, listen to "Reviewing the Beijing Olympics." At about minute 04:30 they discuss freedom of the press and repression of protests, stating "we believe that the police here are under orders not to detain people immediately if they are not causing a public disturbance." How utterly ridiculous and totally irresponsible. That section of the report ends with "It looks like the iron fist is increasingly gloved in velvet." Please please consider writing a letter to NPR asking them to produce a story that presents the truth about press freedom in China during the Olympics.

If you are in the New York Area, there are a bunch of solidarity events planned for tomorrow (Sunday, August 24). See the end of the email for more information.

There will be a special episode of Alive in Baghdad this week, with a short segment on Brian and his detention. Thanks to Students for a Free Tibet for helping us gather some information and footage.

And finaly, I've spent a lot of today pondering a question that came to me sometime last night -- If this is how the Chinese government treats US citizens when the eyes of the world are focused on China, what do they do to Tibetan and Chinese activists, who have no real rights, when no one is watching? I can't even imagine.

Keep an eye on the Free Tibet 2008 website, where you can get the most recent updates.



3. and finally,
We just got word that Brian and friends are on a plane to Los Angeles, arriving Monday morning. He was released with 7 other US citizen detainees: Jeff Goldin, Tom Grant, Mike Liss, James Powderly, Jeff Rae, John Watterberg and Jeremy Wells.

They have been released 6 days early, largely (we believe) because of political pressure and media attention that forced the US Embassy to take action.

The fate of the other 2 international detainees, Florian Norbu Gyanatshang a Tibetan with German citizenship, and Mandie McKeown from Britain, is not clear. Please feel free to call their respective embassies and urge their immediate release. For more info on phone numbers and other action steps, see the Free Tibet 2008 website.

More Onion teevee: the election, apathy, and you

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

Onion teeve: "spokesdrone""

Pentagon's Unmanned Spokesdrone Completes First Press Conference

Was the Iraq war worth it? --UPI video

Although several of the respondents are clearly buying into the myth that the US presence is preventing greater instability, at least the UPI is asking people a question that remains mostly unspoken on American television news.

How can a mass murderer look like Santa Claus?

I guess he just can. Or he can impress you with his homespun ways and shrub-clearing skills. All kidding aside, I was impressed that the Europeans didn't feel obliged to share footage of Radovan Karadžić's arrest making him look ridiculous the way the so-called coalition forces in Iraq seemed to feel obligated to show us Saddam looking bewildered climbing out of his hole and having his teeth examined.

Admittedly I just assume this is the case, not having done an exhaustive search for news items about Karadžić. But I also assume that we here in the US would be made aware of it if it had happened, given our domestic media's appetite for that sort of thing, which is only stayed when it's a (still-current) ally of the US foreign policy establishment.

A is for Arthur, B is for Bear

Only nobody bailed Arthur Andersen out.(weren't they ALSO "too big to fail?") Jim Rogers(above) says that if Bear Stearns had declared bankruptcy, some of the top level people would have had to give back their bonuses, which were apparently paid out fairly recently, by the way...)

Meanwhile we have polls on every little thing, but I haven't seen anything on whether people think the Bear Stearns bailout represents a corrupt government. Of course asking the question that way is probably verboten, so it should be something like "do you think the Bear Stearns bailout was fair?", so it would pass muster with a kindergarden teacher polling her charges. But not even that-- instead we get this:

"Americans confident in 2009 turnaround":

A national CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 60% of respondents think economic conditions in the United States will be "good" next year, as opposed to the 75% who think the economic situation is "poor" now.

"Most people realize that the economy has cycles of ups and downs," said Wachovia economist Sam Bullard. "Fortunately, the last two recessions were some of the shortest on record, so in 2009 we should be pulling up out of this."

What does this mean? Does it mean that 60 percent of Americans(or 60 percent of CNN/Orc poll respondents, at any rate) are:

a.plucky optimists,

b.rugged individualists who don't need the government to help them out, or

c. just buttf**kingly stupid?

A note: I wrote this post some time back, so perhaps it is not so timely, but I just saved it meaning to flesh it out. But I have nothing else to post for a few days so I'm putting this up. Regard it, if you must, like day old bread, or revel in its timelessness, if you can detect any.

I'll miss this guy

George Carlin, May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008.

"There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions," he said. Yet, out of 400,000 words in the English language, there are seven: "That will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war...."

They were shining there for you and me

or perhaps, "The Name of the Game" would have been more appropriate. I dunno, I like this one better.

BBC: Sweden approves wiretapping law

Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic.

Glenn Greenwald:
Time Magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise":

The Congressional Democratic leadership explains that sacrificing the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law is necessary to win some more swing seats...

Nicole Belle, at Crooks n' Liars(via IOZ):

"Good God, is this why we elected a Democratic majority in 2006? So they can continue to enable the Bush administration as more and more independent sources have verified the criminality that we’ve claimed correctly all along? "

IOZ-

Yes.

In the above referenced post,Belle also writes:

John[Amato] mentioned our new coalition, Strange Bedfellows, earlier and I can’t reiterate more strongly the need to fight Blue Dogs like Steny Hoyer, so if you can donate, please do so. Think of the message it sends to Congress that we are willing to fight our own if they don’t represent us and our Democratic values the way they should.

I don't know about the details, but I wonder if that's true, because "Act Blue" sounds like an organization whose approach, starting with its very name, may antagonize voters in so-called "Blue-dog" districts, when outreach is needed. (I also think the views of those voters are often stereotyped, and therefore misunderstood, by people in the lefty blogosphere. Not everybody in the hinterlands is unreachable, any more than are all San Fransicans and Bostonians disappointed that Nader isn't running.) Then again that begs the question of whether abandonment of the democratic party altogether makes more sense that yet another attempt to fix it.

"I must not think bad thoughts"

via ż€₪ż€₪, aka "Shen shen"(I think.)

MSNBC report re Iran

"Sijmadicandhapajiee"

the youtube verbiage reads:
Video clip for the song "Sijmadicandhapajiee" by Avion Travel and Paolo Conte
Author: Giuseppe Ragazzini (www.giusepperagazzini.com)
Sugar Muisc Production by Caterina Caselli

June 2nd CBS News story- Dover, Tenn

I tend to rag on domestic TV news for its superficiality, and naturally I still think it's mostly well-deserved. But I want to take note when they do good, like with this CBS News story from this evening's broadcast by Seth Doane about a foodbank in rural Tennessee. I've never heard of Doane before-- maybe he's a young and idealistic type.

"Are there days that you …" CBS News correspondent Seth Doane began asking.

"That we don't eat?" Liz Thomas said while standing in line at a food pantry. "Yeah."

the Real News in Kentucky

5/25: Elsewhere, Barbara O'Brien of the Mahablog writes:

I believe I read somewhere that African Americans are the only voting demographic that never gave George Bush a majority of popular support, even during his glory days after 9/11. This, I believe, gives African Americans bragging rights as the smartest voting demographic.

Conversely, we might ask ourselves, Why are so many white voters so stupid? I’ll give that some thought.

A recent Newsweek poll suggests a “lurking racial bias in the American electorate,” Darman writes. Do tell. I’m not surprised by racism. I’m surprised people are surprised by racism.

I note that some people seem to have become a bit untethered of their common sense about this because of their support for one candidate or another. Avedon Carol for example-- whom I generally value-- seems to have developed a blindspot here(as well an unwillingness to admit she favors Clinton over Obama.)

In January, apropos of the NH primary results, she wrote:

"But I don't believe for a minute that Democrats said they were going to vote for Obama because it sounded acceptable but they were too racist to actually do it. I just don't."

"Little terrorist"

via Chapati mystery.

Al Nakba at 60

So many words have already been written about the Palistinian-Israeli conflict I'm not sure what I can add. Earlier this week I had a discussion in the comments thread at Karmalised with Diane Warth about a one state versus a two-state solution, which you can see here, apropos of an LA Times op-ed she linked to. Our discussion was and is for naught of course, because neither scenario is anywhere around the corner.

May 15th is commemorated as the anniversary of the Nakba, "the catastrophe", or the forced expulsion of the Palistinians by the nascent Jewish state in 1948. Last week, of course, was the celebration of the 60th birthday of Israel, the other face of the same coin.

Even though 1948 is not exactly ancient history, there is already dispute about the historical record and what really happened. The events at Der Yessin in April of '48 are one example. (More recently the events at Jenin in 2002 are another.)

Here are links to two short films about Deir Yassin, the first[here] is a somewhat impressionistic documentary told from the P.O.V. of an elderly lady who was there, the second["Deir Yassin- what really happened?"] has a more conventional narrative that minimizes the massacre, although it also acknowledges that civilians were killed and the town was attacked by Jewish forces.


As I told Diane, a friend once asked me if I thought there would ever be peace in the middle east, and I told him it would happen when they ran out of oil and the US no longer felt the desire to meddle, although we may well go broke first and find ourselves simply unable to meddle when our Chinese I.O.U.'s get called in. I suppose I'm not exactly objective.

My impression is most Americans really believe our government does care about peace in the middle east, or at least want this to be the case, and hope our apparent missteps in fumbling for peace are just due to our bumbling Western ways being ill-suited for dealing with the inscrutable East, rather than some darker truth. Like-- for instance-- that maybe American exceptionalism and the Israeli myth of the chosen people are schizophrenically complimentary myths that have helped bind the US and Israel together, two nations both invested in denying how their existence came to be at the expense of other people who were already there.



Wikipedia, "The 1948 Palistinan Exodus",
Glenn Greenwald, Salon, "Finding Obama guilty of insufficient devotion to Israel"

Lucian Freud n' Sue Tilley

Yesterday I discussed Dorothea Lange and the subject of her iconic photo of a migrant mother-- and coincidentally, speaking of artists and models, there's this video from Reuters.

Over the top? Sure, but so was Gloria Swanson

I suppose I'm avoiding discussing the real issues of the day, like the upcoming US-sponsored "cleansing" of Sadr city. It's too fucking depressing.

IOZ and Dennis Perrin like this video too. Auf wiedersehen fer now.

Alternate Focus:The rise and fall of Blackwater in Potrero

from Alternate Focus.(about 27 minutes)